What was Motorcity?
Motorcity was a one-season show made for lawful evil megacorporation Disney in 2012. It was, I now believe, always going to be cancelled before its rightful time. Not because it was low-quality or because it was controversial or caused the sort of protests Steven Universe or Owl House did; because it was just in the wrong place. Motorcity was never going to make the money or the merchandise that Disney require its properties make. It had too much heart, it was too unmarketable; the animators fought too hard for creative freedom. Disney was focused on quashing the creative and rebellious spirit of Alex Hirsch; when Motorcity's Canadian Production company Titmouse proved to also have too much of an artistic vision, they killed them on the spot to save their energy for vampirising Hirsch.
The show is about a teenage street gang called the Burners fighting the company/government that owns their city, a fictionalized, future Detroit now split by a steel dome into privileged above-ground Detroit Deluxe and grimy underground Motorcity. The CEO of that all-powerful coporation, Abraham Kane, will stop at nothing to finally destroy the vibrant world under his chrome dystopia, but the anarchical gangs thriving beneath have proven impossible to fully quash. In their stifled environment the Motorcitizens live full lives of community, creativity, fun, invention, and love; they fight Kane's constant attacks and make art, build homes, and have fun together when they can.
While comparitive study case Gravity Falls is still under the vault's lock and key, anyone wanting to watch Motorcity can do so fully on the Internet Archive and in fantastic quality. I think if you asked the people who killed it why they did it, they would say 'Motor What?'
Why Motorcity?
I don't usually feel this strongly about something that was made for The Walt "Energy Vampire" Disney Company. In fact I usually don't watch anything made for Disney. If I had known it had been when I first opened a link and hunkered in, I... probably wouldn't have watched it.
Back in the day, I used to be a regular on kintsugi.seebs.net, an internet forum that was part fandom space and part free psychotherapy clinic, initially made when a few friends on tumblr were talking to each other so much they just made a Xenforo forum in order to do it. A ton of Kintsugijin were big Homestuck fans (including me), to the point that some people joined on the mistaken assumption it was a Homestuck fan forum, ha ha.
I don't recall now who was patient zero for getting a few dozen Kintsugijin to watch Motorcity with them; Lizardlicks made the forum thread (which checks out) but we had clearly been watching and talking before then. The thread was made four years after the show briefly lived and died, after all.
Whoever it was, they got a lot of Kintsugijin to watch Motorcity, and many of us decided we really, really liked it. Despite the show being very dead, a small group of us just never got over it.
A note from my diary—thanks, me—informs me that I first watched it in 2015. I have a very distinct memory of starting my watch in a hotel lobby in the middle of the night, because everyone else was asleep and I couldn't get to sleep myself. Further entries show my rapidly increasing enjoyment of the show and then sheer devestation and remorse that I had ever decided to watch it after I finished.
What's so good about it?
Now, don't go into this thinking it's Infinity Train. It's still a show that was intended for a young audience and has its flaws. I can tell you want has kept me occasionally having 'Motorcity Phases' where I rewatch and get way, way obsessed with it over ten years later.
The Art
First and foremost: This show looks so damn good. It has a very distinct artstyle, fantastic set design, and delightfully eye-bleeding colorschemes from open to close.
The Anticapitalism
I'm a sucker for something made for a megacorp but about the evils about capitalism. The fact that the show is about a scrappy, dirty street gang huddling in hovels and fighting a company that is simultaneously their authoritarian government was going to make me feel a way no matter what.
The Characters
Being a show for young audiences, there are some silly side characters that are not fully considered, but the main cast is tight. Protagonist Mike Chilton is an incredibly enjoyable character whose two central and oddly well-balanced traits are that he's a thrill junkie who can't sit still for more than five mionutes and only feels alive while in danger, and that he is a genuinely loving, compassionate, caring young man who gets continually into trouble because he has more compassion for the stranger than the people who run his world.
Almost everyone agrees, however, that the show-stealer is Julie Kane, fellow Burner who is hiding her legal identity as Evil Dictator Abraham Kane's only child.
The majority of the show's best moments of tension and character building come in the form of Julie's nearly-silent struggle with her double life; she loves her father and tries to steer him to a better path while up in the sunlight, and then, after journeying down into the darkness, she throws her all into fighting against him and undoing his work. Julie is always using her position in the Kane Company—itself a ruse using a fake identity her father made for her so that she could learn about his company and potentially take it over for him someday—to gather intel, steal key items, and hack into company systems to aid the Burners. Julie's plotlines are tense and genuinely interesting in a way that none of the rest of the characters every quite approach.
The Worldbuilding
The worldbuilding for tyhis show was way more thoroughly done than it had to be. You could feel the creative joy of the show writers in every quirky and thoroughly themed street gang, every lovingly designed tool, machine, or vehicle, every monument of Detroit included in ruined form in post-apolcalyptic Motorcity. The science fiction is very soft and there are a few plot holes I could get into if I wanted, but more importantly than that the love of the game shines in every plot twist and new, fully bespoke location the characters explore.
Nice Shot
Despite being a devoted member of a brain-eating zombie fandom that carried on by infecting others years after the soucre material's death, I never found myself with a story I wanted to write about Motorcity until 2025, once I was a whole adult speanding a lot of my waking time fighting the evil dictator hell-bent on ruining my real city, country, and life.
It is so far the only fic I've written for Motorcity. It's called Nice Shot. I think it's pretty good.
I'll retitle this section if I ever write anything else—who knows, give me another ten years and I may think of something good.
Just to call myself out, and because it made me laugh, here is a full entry from that diary (which I have kept on a word doc for 20 years) mentioned above:
September 1, 2016
Alright, seriously, I love it and it’s a huge temptation, but I need to care about something other than Motorcity now. Not because I have anything else to do with my life, heck no. Because there is next to no Motorcity content I have not scoured and I need to stop in order to have mercy on myself.
—
Note to self from two hours ago: hatoful boyfriend was in no way the solution